CHAPTER XXXIII
State of Byron in Switzerland—He goes to Venice—The fourth Canto of “Childe Harold”—Rumination on his own Condition—Beppo—Lament of Tasso—Curious Example of Byron’s metaphysical Love
The situation of Lord Byron in Switzerland was comfortless. He found that “the montain palaces of Nature” afforded no asylum to a haunted heart; he was ill at ease with himself, even dissatisfied that the world had not done him enough of wrong to justify his misanthropy.
Some expectation that his lady would repent of her part in the separation probably induced him to linger in the vicinity of Geneva, the thoroughfare of the travelling English, whom he affected to shun. If it were so, he was disappointed, and, his hopes being frustrated, he broke up the establishment he had formed there and crossed the Alps. After visiting some of the celebrated scenes and places in the north of Italy he passed on to Venice, where he domiciled himself for a time.
During his residence at Venice Lord Byron avoided as much as possible any intercourse with his countrymen. This was perhaps in some degree necessary, and it was natural in the state of his mind. He had become an object of great public interest by his talents; the stories connected with his domestic troubles had also increased his notoriety, and in such circumstances he could not but shrink from the inquisition of mere curiosity. But there was an insolence in the tone with which he declares his “utter abhorrence of any contact with the travelling English,” that can neither be commended for its spirit, nor palliated by any treatment he had suffered. Like Coriolanus he may have banished his country, but he had not, like the Roman, received provocation: on the contrary, he had been the aggressor in the feuds with his literary adversaries; and there was a serious accusation against his morals, or at least his manners, in the circumstances under which Lady Byron withdrew from his house. It was, however, his misfortune throughout life to form a wrong estimate of himself in everything save in his poetical powers.
A life in Venice is more monotonous than in any other great city; but a man of genius carries with him everywhere a charm, which secures to him both variety and enjoyment. Lord Byron had scarcely taken up his abode in Venice, when he began the fourth canto of Childe Harold, which he published early in the following year, and dedicated to his indefatigable friend Mr Hobhouse by an epistle dated on the anniversary of his marriage, “the most unfortunate day,” as he says, “of his past existence.”
In this canto he has indulged his excursive moralizing beyond even the wide licence he took in the three preceding parts; but it bears the impression of more reading and observation. Though not superior in poetical energy, it is yet a higher work than any of them, and something of a more resolved and masculine spirit pervades the reflections, and endows, as it were, with thought and enthusiasm the aspect of the things described. Of the merits of the descriptions, as of real things, I am not qualified to judge: the transcripts from the tablets of the author’s bosom he has himself assured us are faithful.
“With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line, which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese, in Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted and imagined that I had drawn a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and the disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether—and have done so.”
This confession, though it may not have been wanted, gives a pathetic emphasis to those passages in which the poet speaks of his own feelings. That his mind was jarred, and out of joint, there is too much reason to believe; but he had in some measure overcome the misery that clung to him during the dismal time of his sojourn in Switzerland, and the following passage, though breathing the sweet and melancholy spirit of dejection, possesses a more generous vein of nationality than is often met with in his works, even when the same proud sentiment might have been more fitly expressed:
I’ve taught me other tongues—and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise,
Nor is it harsh to make or hard to find
A country with—aye, or without mankind.
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
Th’ inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea?